A balcony cabin, where the balcony faces INSIDE the ship? It doesn't sound possible, but it is! I spent 7 days 'neighbourhood balcony' cabin on Symphony of The Seas, and here's what I thought.
Normally if you take a cruise in a balcony cabin you can look forward to views of the ocean and the ports that you’ll be visiting. That is not what happened on my last cruise though because I stayed in what is called a ‘neighbourhood balcony cabin’ which although it did have a balcony, it had no clear view of the ocean.
It is one of the most controversial cabins at sea and definitely one of the strangest cabins I’ve ever had, I saw and heard some weird things from here too.
There are plenty of videos and reviews online that warn others not to stay in the cabin but as I didn’t want to pay the price of a oceanview facing balcony and this one was much cheaper, I decided to give it a go.
I usually cruise in inside cabins anyway that don’t have any windows so I figured, it must be a step up from that. The ship that I was sailing on was Symphony of The Seas which is one of the biggest and most exciting ships in the world and I was so happy and excited to have a cruise booked on her, I’d have stayed in a cupboard or a lifeboat if it was the only way I could get on this ship, still I hoped that I wouldn’t regret my decision to book this cabin. I’d been looking forward to this cruise for years.
I booked what is called a guaranteed cabin meaning that I was guaranteed to get at least what I booked but I didn’t get to pick the specific location. Doing this saved me a little bit of money and usually what happens when you book a guaranteed cabin is that you get assigned the leftover cabins. That is probably what happened here, everybody who is willing to pay to pick their rooms does and then the guarantees are assigned.
